for Davidson’s willingness to call there from time to time. And Davidson’s Chinaman knew that perfectly well, too. So he only smiled his dignified bland smile and said:

“‘All right Captain. You do what you like.”

‘I will explain presently how this connection between Davidson and that fellow came about. Now I want to tell you about the part of this affair which happened here. The preliminaries of it.

‘You know as well as I do that these tiffin-rooms where we are sitting now have been in existence for many years. Well, next day, about twelve o’clock, Davidson dropped in here to get something to eat.

‘And here comes the only moment in this story where accident—mere accident—plays a part. If Davidson had gone home that day for tiffin there would be now, after twelve years or more, nothing changed in his kindly, placid smile.

‘But he came in here, and perhaps it was sitting at this very table that he remarked to a friend of mine that his next trip was to be a dollar-collecting trip. He added, laughing, that his wife was making rather a fuss about it. She had begged him to stay ashore and get somebody else to take his place for a voyage. She thought there was some danger on account of the dollars. He told her, he said, that there were no Javasea^* pirates nowadays except in boys’ books. He had laughed at her fears, but he was very sorry, too, for when she took any notion into her head it was impossible to argue her out of it. She would be worrying herself all the time he was away. Well, he couldn’t help it. There was no one ashore fit to take his place for the trip.

‘This friend of mine and I went home together on the same mail-boat, and he mentioned that conversation one evening in the Red Sea while we were talking over the things and people we had just left, with more or less regret.

‘I can’t say that Davidson occupied a very prominent place. Moral excellence seldom does. He was quietly appreciated by those who knew him well, but his more obvious distinction consisted in this—that he was married. Ours, as you remember, was a bachelor crowd; in spirit anyhow, if not absolutely in fact. There might have been a few wives in existence, but if so they were invisible, distant, never alluded to. For what would have been the good? Davidson alone was visibly married.

‘Being married suited him exactly. It fitted him so well that the wildest of us did not resent the fact when it was disclosed. Directly he felt his feet out here Davidson had sent for his wife. She came out (from West Australia) in the Somerset^* under the care of Captain Ritchie—you, know, Monkey-face Ritchie—who couldn’t praise enough her sweetness, he gentleness and her charm. She seemed to be the heaven- born mate for Davidson. She found on arrival a very pretty bungalow on the hill, ready for her and the little girl they had.

‘We used to admire her from a distance. It was a girlish head out of a keepsake. We had not many opportunities for a closer view because she did not care to give them to us. We would have been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow that we were not very welcome there. Not that she ever said anything ungracious. She never had much to say for herself. I was, perhaps, the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home. What I noticed most in the general aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth. But then I am an observer with strong prejudices. Most of us were fetched by her white, swanlike neck, by that drooping, pure, innocent profile. There was a lot of latent devotion to Davidson’s wife hereabouts, at that time, I can tell you. But my idea was that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of the sort of men we were, a mistrust which extended, I fancied, to her very husband at times.

‘I observed to this friend I have been telling you of that Davidson must have been vexed by this display of wifely anxiety.